# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S66
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

66 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

in place, if something other than the certainly necessary and useful figures is reported, especially since figures cannot express all that goes on in the mission and leave unconsidered much that is recorded in the annals of heaven as something important. May the writer of this therefore be permitted to make known this and that from his mission congregation which might hold some interest for friends of the mission. At the outset I wish it established that the progress of the mission in Greensboro (a neat little city of by now 19,000 inhabitants) in the last two years was not always outwardly victorious. Dark clouds of tribulation continually covered our congregational sky. Soon after the last session of the Synodical Conference we suffered a bitter loss through the death of a faithful, long-time member of the congregation, who was run over by a train. Hardly had the congregation recovered from this when it was scandalized by the fact that the widow of the member so cruelly killed, who for years had been regarded as a faithful Christian woman, ran off secretly with a married Negro. Then one of our best members became insane; and this gave our enemies a long-desired opportunity to make the superstitious Negroes believe that this was a heavenly proof that all Lutherans would go crazy! Even though our members were not influenced by such talk, it is quite impossible to describe what an impression this case made on those who are outside, as a result of which church attendance also became smaller. Further, we had to exclude two members from the congregation because they would no longer submit to the Word of God. Still others have recently moved to the North, because wages, in spite of terribly expensive provisions, are so low here in the South that the Negroes can live here without the wages of sin only with great difficulty. . . . The writer can give his congregation members the testimony that they all, with one or two exceptions, attend regularly the preaching services of Sunday and Wednesday, and several also the Sunday schools. . . . All our communicants have received the Lord's Supper on average two and a half times a year. Besides catechism sermons on Wednesday evening the writer also held catechism instruction weekly in his house, and to the honor of God it can be said that the saving knowledge in this little black congregation certainly does not lag behind that in our white congregations. . . . The Word of God still stands on the candlestick and enlightens the faith and life of our colored Lutherans here. A gratifying sign is the brotherly admonition and rebuke which our colored Lutherans let each other receive here. That they often go astray needs hardly any assurance; all the more gratifying is it then to know that they are glad to let themselves be brought back again by God's Word on to the